by Julia Pandl
Peace won’t have me.
MY FATHER IS lonely. I had no idea.
He prays his broken rosary.
He eats canned peaches like they’re going out of style.
It doesn’t work, him being skinny.
He’s not the same anymore.
There’s no room for sameness.
I know he’s going to die.
“DAD HAS PROSTATE cancer.”
They tell us eighteen months.
“Keep an eye on Daddy.”
I pick my hangnails until they bleed.
He prays his broken rosary.
I know he’s going to die.
Peace won’t have me.
ON NEW YEAR’S Eve, I rolled my father a joint on my Pottery Barn coffee table. He always wanted to try marijuana. He talked and talked about legalization. He quoted articles. He dug up statistics.
He turned eighty, so I figured what the hell.
It took forever. I don’t roll joints.
I waited until after Mass the next day and gave it to him as he sat down to read the paper. We don’t go out for brunch on New Year’s Day. That was just thirteen months ago. Today is different.
Today is another day.
Today is June 4, 2007.
“YOU’RE DYING, DAD,” I say, three and a half words that taste like bile, slipping across the back of my throat, over my tongue. These words are waves, charged with an impossible current, churning with the future. There for us to see, to wonder about, but not to mention.
The medication isn’t working.
He’s sitting across from me on the big flowered chair.
He has his hands on his knees.
He chokes with me, for me, on those words.
“You’re dying, Dad.”
Today is another day.
HE’S BEEN PUTTING things off—books, nights out, vacations . . . life.
The future is charged, wound tight with noise, waiting.
Next year will never come. Next year just disappeared, perhaps also Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I tell him we need to talk. He says, “Uh-oh.” He knows my tone the same way I know his.
He’s sitting across from me with his hands on his knees.
Between us—the Pottery Barn table, an ottoman, and three and a half words.
Today is different.
Today is another day.
HE NEVER SMOKED the joint.
He asked, “What is that?”
I replied, “It’s marijuana, Dad. You’ve always said you wanted to try it, so here you go. A gift to celebrate your eightieth year. Let’s give it a whirl.”
He laughed at me.
“Thanks. I can’t,” he said.
And I tossed it on the Pottery Barn table.
TODAY IS DIFFERENT.
“The doctor said the medicine isn’t working, Dad. You know what that means, right?”
What that means softened his expression, his almond eyes and pink cheeks.
I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad, relief or shock, the thrill or the agony.
I still don’t know.
REALITY TASTES LIKE bile too, or poison. I am the siren beyond the waves, beckoning him to crash on the rocks of knowledge and truth, of the future.
“I’m not sure,” he said.
“It means there isn’t going to be a next year.”
I feel like I just killed him. Hastening the process with the poison of reality. Crashing hope on the rocks. I’ll always wonder.
THE MUTED TV buzzed.
“Today is the day, Dad. Today you have fun, not tomorrow.”
His time has been cut short. Now he knows.
And now I wonder what I’ve done.
We can know too many things. There’s so much to know, so many truths with sharp edges and fangs and tongues that spit cancer.
I cried.
Now he knows.
I’m a baby, I’m his baby, and his friend.
Three and a half words between friends.
TODAY IS DIFFERENT.
That joint sat on the Pottery Barn table while we ate New Year’s Day brunch. I cooked. Scrambled eggs, bacon, strawberries, toast.
He nodded toward it and said, “That’s a terrible-looking cigarette.”
I remember being offended.
“How would you know?”
It took forever. I don’t roll joints.
“It looks terrible.”
I picked it up and tossed it in the back of my freezer, behind the English muffins and the black bananas.
TODAY IS ANOTHER day.
He’s sitting across from me with his hands on his knees.
That joint is still in the freezer.
You’re dying, Dad. Three and a half words.
Next year just disappeared.
My father is lonely.
I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I cried.
He didn’t.
He stood up and opened his arms. I felt them wrap tightly around me, his strong arms of knowledge and truth, of the future.
“Thank you,” he said. “Now I know. Thank you. Thank you.”
17
Swedish Fish
It’s funny how things work out, how a short conversation—on the phone, over a cup of coffee, or during a round of golf, at just the right time—can alter your circumstances and leave a lasting mark. My brother Stevie’s wife, Sally, and I had just finished playing nine holes at Squires Golf Club in Port Washington, a pretty, public course twenty minutes north of Milwaukee on the shores of Lake Michigan. The cleats on our shoes clicked in time across the asphalt as we walked toward the car. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm but not too hot. A soft breeze rolled off the water and rippled through the hawthorn flowers and the fairway grass. It was the end of July. The dog-day warmth had finally melted into the air and the cicadas hummed with delight.
“That was a good round,” Sally said, lifting the back door of her minivan. “You played well.”
“You think?”
“Sure,” she said, her tone unconvincing.
“Thanks.” I laughed, and tossed my bag in the car. On the golf course, I had a gorilla-like finesse. My short game, unfortunately, looked exactly like my long game, so I spent most days, hacking my way out of the long grass, back and forth over the green. Still, golf agreed with me. I had a penchant for sports that combined physical activity with drinking beer and long periods of rest. Thankfully, so did Sally.
She kicked off her right shoe, and then her left, over the bumper and in between our bags, and said, “Should we get a beer?”
“Yeah. A quick one, though. I want to stop by my dad’s this afternoon.” I talked to him almost every day, but his cancer had left me with an overwhelming need to lay eyes on him.
“Where should we go?”
“Doesn’t matter. You pick.”
We ended up at a little steak-sandwich-and-haystack-onion-rings supper club outside of Port Washington. It was the kind of place that had a dusty wreath of plastic flowers hanging from the ladies’ room door and a glass jar of Slim Jims behind the bar. The place had a thick, sweet smell, like Murphy Oil Soap. The aroma wrapped itself around me as we made our way through the foyer. A perfect row of empty green vinyl stools lined the bar, so we took seats in the middle and each ordered a Miller Lite.
“So,” Sally said, “how do you think your dad’s doing?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure. He seems like he’s hanging in there okay.”
“Have you ever thought about moving in with him?”
I had considered it. Twice. The first time had been a couple of days after my mother died. I found him and my sister Chrissy sitting in their pajamas at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. Chrissy pulled a brittle rubber band off Terry’s black prayer book and began leafing through the holy cards. I sat down across from my father and watched him separate the novenas from the Mass cards. After a very brief discussion about what to
do, we set the novenas aside, figuring we might need them someday, slipped the Mass cards back into the battered prayer book, and agreed to bury the book with her. If a person can truly possess a thing, that prayer book was absolutely hers, and its contents were as much, perhaps even more, a part of her soul as any of us. And those cards marked the lives, and deaths, of grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and children of friends. They, we decided, should go with her. They, it occurred to me, were already there. And for a second, my heart ached with envy.
As Chrissy carefully wrapped the rubber band back around the book, George looked at me and said, very matter-of-factly, “I know you’ve been thinking of getting a place of your own. You are more than welcome to move in with me if you want.”
He was right. Katie and I had been living and working together for seven years, and while the situation worked, it was time for me to put my big-girl pants on and get my own apartment. Moving in with my father would have defeated the purpose, and I would be moving in with my dad.
“Dad . . .”
“Maybe save a little money.”
I actually bristled. In my tiny, selfish mind, the notion of moving back in with my parents—or parent, as it were—at thirty-two and single, screamed spinster. I’d be just a hip replacement away from a house full of unkempt cats, dirty afghans, and wearing slacks ordered from the back of Parade magazine.
“Dad, I can’t. I appreciate the offer, really, but I need to figure out a way to be on my own for a while, to be . . . responsible for myself.” Honestly, what an idiot.
“YEAH,” I SAID to Sally, eyeing the row of clocks above the bar. “It’s funny you ask. I was thinking about maybe moving in with him just the other day.” I took a swig of my beer. It was 4 a.m. in Tokyo.
“Why don’t you?” Sally asked.
“It was just a thought, in and out, you know? We were on our way to Mass and he seemed kind of . . . I don’t know . . . lonely.”
“I think you should.”
“You think he’d want me to?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe,” I said, but I knew it was a good idea.
A COUPLE OF hours later I found myself on George’s patio. He sat across from me, half in the sun and half under the shade of the table umbrella. There was still a fullness in his cheeks, but his skin had become jaundiced. Other than aspirin, and even those he crushed on the counter and stuffed in a banana, I had never witnessed my father taking any medication, over the counter or otherwise. His liver happily opened the door for gin and brandy, it knew how to entertain beer and wine, but medication and cancer—they were the unwanted party crashers. His white undershirt hung loosely around his neck, his comfy, round belly was all but gone, and his gray sweatpants sagged around his slippers and brushed the bricks on the patio. Still, he seemed more of himself. His “George-ness” had somehow grown larger.
He squinted and smiled unconsciously as he slipped his gold opener along the length of a letter that had arrived in the mail. I had watched him do this ten thousand times, at the kitchen or the dining room table, or there on the patio, always with a drink and a happy grin. My father loved opening the mail. He was meticulous about how he did it. Junk went into the garbage can sitting next to his chair. Bills were carefully placed in a “to be paid” folder so they could “be paid” later. All solicitations for charitable donations went in a separate pile and later into an empty tomato box that he sorted through each January. He did all his giving at once, keeping track with a notebook and a chart, so he could weed out the multiples. I looked at the pile of requests and wondered whether, come January, he’d be writing out checks, or I’d be throwing them away.
“Um . . . Dad?” Still figuring out how to spin the conversation without offending his sense of self or calling into question his capabilities, I tried to tread lightly.
“Yeah,” he said, not looking up.
“I had a thought.”
“Really? Amazing.” He smirked.
“Funny.”
“What is it?”
“Hypothetically, how would you feel about me moving in here? I mean . . . I’ve been thinking about moving anyway . . . and I just thought . . .”
His smirk disappeared, his face slackened, and he let out a deep, doglike sigh. He closed his eyes, bit both lips, and cocked his head just a fraction to the right, letting the sun catch the whole of his face. Above the gutters, strips of pea green paint curled against the shingles. My father took good care of his house. I remember being irritated that the painters, who had done the job just a year earlier, had made such a clumsy and obvious oversight.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” I said, backpedaling. “If you don’t want me here . . . it’s cool. I just got to thinking, and I was chatting with Sally . . .”
He set down his mail and prayerfully pulled his hands over the bridge of his nose. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“What does that . . . mean?”
“I have wanted to ask one of you girls to move in here for a long time, but I thought it would be too much of an imposition. I didn’t want to put any of you out.”
Ugh. I swallowed a lump as big as my fist. “Really?”
“Yes, yes,” he said, clapping his hands softly.
I’ve seen some things that most people would consider beautiful—brilliant sunsets behind the Golden Gate Bridge, bright orange harvest moons shimmering across Lake Michigan, the sprays at the Cliffs of Moher, Michelangelo’s Pietà, even Pope John Paul II saying Mass at the Vatican. Not one of these things can touch the breathtakingly pure and absolute expression of relief I saw spread itself across my father’s face. That look was beauty.
THE PLAN WAS for me to move in at the end of September. I would have two full months to pack and give proper notice to my landlord. Cancer clouded the circumstances—sure, that’s what cancer does—but still, I was excited. I had a bunch of little future vignettes rolling around in my head: Packers games, chicken wings, climbing the tower at the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center, boning the Thanksgiving turkey, maybe even a little “George and Julie” book club, Christmas decorations, and Tom & Jerrys. Plus, there were the added bonuses of parking my car in the garage and not having to buy toilet paper.
Though it wasn’t planned that way, I ended up moving in on August 17. It was a Friday afternoon. I had just finished my fifth week at my new job and I felt good. The seeds of confidence had rooted themselves in the fact that no one had fired me yet. Happy to have the weekend ahead of me, I picked up the phone as I merged onto the expressway and dialed George’s number.
“Hello, Pandl’s,” he answered.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Who’s this?”
“Me.”
“Who’s me?”
“Julie.” I rolled my eyes and checked the rearview mirror. It happened every time. We had very similar phone voices, my sisters and me, and neither he nor Terry could ever tell the difference. “Whaddya doin’?”
“Sitting on the patio with Peggy, having a glass of wine.”
“How do you feel?”
“Well . . . not the greatest.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, turning the radio down.
“Well . . . just kind of achy and blah.”
Blah meant fatigue, cancer’s crony, the unrelenting and selfish sidekick. Fatigue was the uninvited dinner guest with yellow teeth, dirty fingernails, and earwax that showed up at every party, demanded everyone’s undivided attention, and overstayed his welcome. Achy, I knew we could kick out. Blah was tougher. “Hmm . . . have you taken anything?”
“I took a Vico Dan an hour or so ago.”
Uh-oh, I thought. That’s a first. My parents were polar opposites in the prescription drug use department. Despite the fact that his cancer had progressed to his pelvis, his ribs, his spine, and his skull, my father approached narcotics with suspicion, concern, even revulsion, as if all pharmaceuticals were distributed by al-Qaeda. My mother, on the other hand, was a bit of a junkie. She was d
iabetic, of course, so she had legitimate needs, but she secured prescriptions, usually over the phone, so deftly it was like watching a pickpocket at a carnival.
“You can take another one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Dad, I’m sure. The doctor said one or two every six hours. Remember?”
“I don’t know—”
“Dad, you have bone cancer. It’s okay to take the pills.”
After we hung up, it crossed my mind that I should spend the night with him. It was a little wisp of a thought, scurrying through my plan to meet Katie down on the lakefront at Irish Fest. I’ll admit it: I did not want to sleep at George’s. My job had me traveling, and I was so looking forward to a night in my own bed. Plus, I had not mentally prepared for the somber implications that came along with staying overnight. Never mind the fact that he didn’t have HBO. Still, I stopped at my apartment, ran in, and stuffed a toothbrush, T-shirt, and pajama bottoms in a backpack, just in case.
Looking back, I suspect a little piece of me knew the minute I pulled into the driveway that I wouldn’t be leaving. But as I turned off the ignition, I held out hope that within an hour or two I’d find myself under a beer tent, listening to Finbar MacCarthy. He and Peggy were still sitting on the patio, an empty chardonnay bottle between them. The sun had dipped between the branches of the big maple in the front yard, illuminating a small swarm of gnats and bleaching the house in a shaft of light. I tossed my keys on the table, plopped into a cushioned seat, and said, “So . . . what’s goin’ on?”
“Not much,” Peggy said.
George looked fatigued. Chubby sacks, like oysters, had fixed themselves under his eyes. His hair was dry and mousy. While his face was an unnerving shade of yellowish gray, the wine had pinked up his cheeks and his earlobes.
“You don’t look too good, Dad.”
“Yeah,” he said, and shook his head. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.” Peggy and I exchanged a sideways glance. “The pain just came on all of a sudden . . . in the last day or so.”
“Have you eaten anything today?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I had some canned peaches,” he said with a hearty smile.